Vehicle platooning has become important for thevehicle industry. Yet conclusive results with respect to thefuel reduction possibilities of platooning remain unclear, inparticular when considering constraints imposed by the topography.The focus of this study is to establish whether itis more fuel-efficient to maintain or to split a platoon that isfacing steep uphill and downhill segments. Two commercialcontrollers, an adaptive cruise controller and a look-aheadcruise controller, are evaluated and alternative novel controlstrategies are proposed. The results show that an improvedfuel-efficiency can be obtained by maintaining the platoonthroughout a hill. Hence, a cooperative control strategy basedon preview information is presented, which initiates the changein velocity at a specific point in the road for all vehiclesrather than simultaneously changing the velocity to maintainthe spacing. A fuel reduction of up to 14% can be obtainedover a steep downhill segment and a more subtle benefit of0.7% improvement over an uphill segment with the proposedcontroller, compared to the combination of the commerciallyavailable cruise controller and adaptive cruise controller thatcould be used for platooning. The findings show that it isboth fuel-efficient and desirable in practice to consider previewinformation of the topography in the control strategy.